Listen and Download @ http://77min.staires.org

This is probably the first playlist I constructed. I’m assuming it was at the specific behest of my soon-to-be girlfriend shortly after the we met for the first time at a Sea Wolf/Okkervil River show (it only sound so picturesque to me now that I am writing about it psuedo-brokenheartedly on the internet), or maybe I just made it for her because I felt like it. Either way, while we drove separately to Ocean Beach (down in San Diego) to spend our second date (a night in a hotel on the beach with a balcony and all, I was feeling full of whimsy [and money, apparently] at this point almost exactly a year ago) she listened to this—perhaps I thought it would set the tone for our relationship, opening the album with Frightened Rabbit’s Old Old Fashioned.

And it kind of did. Though some of her reality television mixed my blood (I find myself watching TLC more often than I should when the programming involves cakes or wedding dresses), for the most part our relationship was about non-technical pursuits and—Oh, God, what am I doing? I’m not going to sit here and analyze my shit.

There’s a lot of good shit on this playlist. Here’s a tracklist, not that you can’t just go listen to it or download it and see.

01 – Frightened Rabbit – Old Old Fashioned
02 – The Moondoggies – Bogachiel Rain Blues
03 – Bodies Of Water – Even In A Cave
04 – Cloud Cult – When Water Comes to Life
05 – Okkervil River – For Real
06 – The Dodos – God?
07 – Cloud Cult – Car Crash
08 – Jose Gonzalez – Storm
09 – Bodies of Water – I Guess I’ll Forget the Sound, I Guess, I Guess
10 – Bon Iver – Skinny Love
11 – Mass Solo Revolt – Easy Mark
12 – Andrew Bird – Oh Sister
13 – Band Of Horses – Our Swords
14 – Vampire Weekend – Bryn
15 – Eels – If I was your girlfriend (live)
16 – Bottom of the Hudson – Riot Act
17 – Akron-Family – Ed Is A Portal
18 – The Magnetic Fields – 100,000 Fireflies

We fell in love, or at least she did, and I tried my best, and then I broke her heart over and over again. These things happen. Not to me, usually, but they do. I’d analyze some of the songs I picked retroactively (like how our last mutual concert will probably forever be Frightened Rabbit, and how it’s sort of mirrored by how so much of her musical taste became influenced by mine, or how we could have met at Vampire Weekend months before we met and I didn’t even know it when I put VW on here, or how so many of the songs just seem to foreshadow the eventual failure that plagues me—but then again, I just listen to depressing music, so who fucking knows) but I’ll spare you all that.

I had to buy non-DRMed versions of Easy Mark, Even In A Cave, and downloaded Oh Sister from a blog on Hype Machine, so that I could bring you this playlist. Stupid iTunes.

Listen and Download @ http://77min.staires.org